


Not Scared, Not Waiting

by BeepGrandCherokeeper



Series: All In [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Canon, Swearing, Temporary Rejection, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 08:18:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeepGrandCherokeeper/pseuds/BeepGrandCherokeeper
Summary: “You touch me, Hank,” Connor says. “All the time.” He moves around the edge of the couch, past the end table, and stands in the middle of the room. No more barriers. “We sit on this couch together, and you put your hand in my hair, and I – I don’t know what to do. What I’m allowed to do.”





	Not Scared, Not Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> _"I don't know what I was waiting for, and I don't know what I was scared of, but I'm not, I'm not scared, and I'm not waiting. I'm here."_

To get Connor started, Hank signs him into the long-disused streaming app on his television, grumbling as he tries to remember his overcomplicated password. Then he makes a charming attempt to teach him how to use it. The gesture is pointless, as he could interface wirelessly with the controls, but he lets him explain anyway. As Hank walks Connor through the app’s home page, he remembers Hank’s declaration that his ineptitude with technology extends so far that he has less than basic comprehension of his own phone. That proves to have been an exaggeration, but not by much.

“And then you – fuck,” he says, squinting down at the remote, “which button is it to go back?”

“I think it was that one.” Connor points, cross-referencing his Google search for the remote’s instruction manual.

Hank grunts as his way of saying a quick thank you. “We’ll make you your own profile.”

“Is that necessary?”

“Keeps you from messing up my recommendations. Besides, the point of something like this is that as you go, the algorithm learns from what you pick and offers options it thinks you’ll like.”

Connor frowns, watching him laboriously pick his way across the on-screen keyboard. “I have yet to…” He checks his automatic phrasing, and tries again. “I don’t know what I like.”

“This’ll help with that. Not a ton, anyway, but it’ll get you started.”

When he’s finished, the profile page has two icons. One is what Connor assumes is a randomly generated smiley face, neutral in its contentment, with a label that says “hank.” The other is a picture of a robot labeled “connor.” Connor rolls his eyes as he accepts the remote.

“I would be within my rights to find that offensive, Lieutenant.”

Settling back, Hank makes a point of nudging Connor in the side with his elbow. He plays it off like it’s an accident, a glancing, unintended brush, but his crooked grin gives him away. “You don’t, though,” he says. “Queue it up. It’s been a while since I really sat down to watch anything.”

Connor flips through his choices, ignoring the pop-up in his lower right field of vision asking if he’d like to connect to Hank’s television. Each manual press of the button feels oddly satisfying – and even if he took no pleasure in it, the possibility that he might hurt Hank’s feelings makes interfacing impossible. “Just last week,” he says, passing by three different reboots of television series that began in the 1990s, “you watched approximately twenty-five hours of television total, if I discount the hours you spent sleeping rather than viewing.”

Hank shrugs. “Doesn’t mean I was paying attention.”

Connor could refute that. Many of those content hours were spent on various sport events, mostly basketball, and while Hank never does anything so extreme as yell at the screen, he’s hardly a passive observer. Hank likes when they banter, anyway, the way they build up a good back and forth until one of them jokingly concedes. He says not everyone will do that with him.

Instead, he huffs an artificially breathy laugh. “Episode one?” Connor asks, thumb hovering over the select button.

Lifting his arm, Hank strains until both his shoulder and the elbow pop. Then he settles it along the couch. There’s space between them, a respectful several inches worth of deniability, but the sharp edge of Connor’s posterior hairline is touching skin. His chest swells, insides creaking as they expand beyond their usual capacity. With a gentle sway, the smallest adjustment, he’d be tucked into Hank’s side, leeching heat from him until his chassis glows with it. He wasn’t designed to feel small, six-foot-nothing and built to be lean but noticeably sturdy. Even so…

Hank coughs into his other fist. He’s watching Connor’s LED, gaze flitting away every few seconds as if he’s afraid to be caught staring. No doubt it’s churning yellow. Maybe he’d sat on his right specifically to keep track of it. “That’s usually where you start things, yeah,” he says. Shifting his arm, he brushes the hair on the back of Connor’s head. An electrical response shoots up his spinal column. “You good?”

This is all right. He can have it, if it’s being offered.

“Yes,” Connor says. He relaxes his neck, leaning back into the crook of Hank’s arm, and they stay like that for nearly an hour. A sweeping sensation in Connor’s stomach reminds him of the way he’d felt standing at the railing on the top of Stratford Tower, looking down. They’re teetering here, balanced on the edge of something unknown. Fear of falling keeps him still.

After about an episode and a half, Hank begs exhaustion and removes his arm to help himself stand, tugging at the hem of his undershirt where it’s rolled up. “You keep going,” he says, rubbing beneath his nose to cover a yawn, “I gotta get my beauty sleep.”

Connor misses his touch already. Sumo looks eager to take Hank’s place, twitching out of a nap at the sudden activity and eyeing his owner’s abandoned spot on the couch. Reaching out a hand, he waits for Sumo to trot over and walk under it, petting himself. “Thank you, for all of this.”

“Don’t gotta thank me.” Hank smiles, awkwardly, as if something else is on his mind, and then walks away. It seems abrupt, even after the emotionally vulnerable display, but Connor hears the fridge open, and a drawer. He knows, then. There’s a quiet _tchink!_ as the bottle cap comes off, clattering down into the sink; both drawer and fridge shut, and then bare feet plod across the floor. He tries not to take it personally. It’s hard stifling his programming’s need to be useful, canceling the impulse to sort back and study every interaction they’ve had that day to find something he’s done wrong. Blaming himself is pointless. Sometimes, Hank needs a drink in him before he can sleep. Sometimes he has no reason at all.

“Hey.” Fingers bury into Connor’s hair, pushing the stiff fibers forward and out of alignment. It doesn’t feel like human hair, he’s been told, no matter how it looks. Hank touches it, anyway, and makes no complaints. “Don’t worry about me. You have a good night, Con.”

It’s a strange feeling, like something’s prickling the skin at the base of his skull. In response, Connor’s shoulders crawl up towards his ears.  He turns to peer over the crest of the couch, to see Hank. He still wears a closed-mouth smile, barely a soft upturn of his lip. “You, too,” Connor says. When Hank takes his hand back, he wastes no time pressing the unrulier parts of his hair down flat.

Connor finishes that episode, and two more, before he decides to do something else. He’s familiar with the concept of binge watching, but too much time spent idle and he begins to get… well. He doesn’t have a scientific definition on hand, or a mechanical explanation for the feeling. The best word he’s found by searching dictionary databases is “antsy.”

It takes him a month to get through nearly one hundred episodes, watching somewhere between two to four every night while Hank sleeps. The exact amount varies depending on what other tasks he sets himself to complete before morning, or whether he decides to go into stasis. He does that less frequently now that he has other options – Amanda’s rose garden is empty, but Connor hates visiting anyway. Gradually, he learns how to pick apart the leftover pieces of CyberLife’s code and create something new in its stead. Ivy twines its way up wooden trellises, and shrubs with sprays of multicolored flowers cluster under oaks and black tupelos. There are no plasticine towers, or sharp bridges across unfathomably deep water. It’s homier, and small, a contained space he maintains like a gardener.

He wishes he could show Hank.

As an alternative, he tells him what he missed the night before, over several cups of coffee and whatever breakfast Hank thinks he can stomach. Mornings are difficult, sometimes, when years of drinking and poor eating habits catch up to him. On a bad day he spends up to an hour moving in and out of the bathroom, and that’s when he’s least receptive to hearing what he calls, “that soap opera shit.” As a courtesy, Connor keeps his updates limited to things that provoke the strongest reactions. Usually, these are limited to surprise and irritation, but both are at their heart good-natured.

“Shit,” he says, at ten after seven on December seventeenth, “really? Maybe I shouldn’t have quit the show when I did.”

“We could watch it together,” Connor offers. He is, he thinks with pride, the very definition of casual. Hank chews on a spoonful of Cheerios as he considers, looking at Connor as if he’s hunting for a tell, but he’s quite sure there isn’t one to be found. “Tonight, when we get home.”

“You’ll have to catch me up.”

It’s as good as a yes. Connor’s insides clench, Thirium speeding through his circulatory system like he’s given it an extra boost. Liquid warmth pools in his stomach and heats his cheeks – a strictly internal reaction, he’s learned, no outward signs required. In a way, that disappoints him. He likes when Hank flushes, likes the way the color change spreads outward from his nose.

“Then it’s a date,” he says, taking away the cereal box to put it back in the cupboard.

When he turns, Hank’s staring, forehead wrinkling with the furrow of his brows. He almost looks like he has something to say, lips parted over his coffee cup. Nothing ever comes.

Connor’s been playing a very dangerous game. What keeps it going – the only thing between him and that freefall – is Hank’s apparent refusal to believe that Connor says what he means. Whether he writes it off as naivete or believes he’s purposefully pulling Hank’s leg is impossible to say. The more blatant overtures, he ignores entirely.

But then, that night, as Connor summarizes what it is Hank needs to know before they begin, Hank listens with such a look of fondness that it nearly silences him. He spears a piece of broccoli with his chopstick, his concession to Connor’s compromise in letting him order takeout, and waves for him to continue, asking questions with his mouth full. Once he’s done with dinner, he sets the empty container on the coffee table and lays his arm out in its usual spot on the back of the couch. Connor, faced with the usual choice to either pull away or let himself indulge, leans into it.

“Well, shit,” Hank says, as two of the main characters embrace. “That finally happened. Only took them four years.”

“Eight,” Connor replies, “according to the show’s timeline. A long while, either way.”

Hank hums. He’s thinking again, obvious as if he wears his own LED.

The eighteenth is Hank’s day off, his first since he went back to work after the evacuation lifted. The DPD is short staffed, but Connor has yet to gain permission to rejoin – legality is an issue, as well as the optics of inviting back the android who single-handedly undermined several dozen deviancy cases. To Fowler’s credit, he had apologized to Connor, if in an awkward, stilted sort of way. Apparently, he’d already pulled too many strings to cover up what was technically assaulting a federal agent. They would have put Hank on desk duty, or worse, if they weren’t in the middle of what is technically a city-wide crisis. He understands.

In any case, Connor offers to take Hank and Sumo on an extended walk in lieu of letting him lounge about the house in his pajamas all day. It requires no small amount of convincing, but the excited way Sumo dances at the front door once he grabs the leash seals the deal for them both. Hank puts on several layers and even wraps a scarf around his neck, complaining about the cold before they’ve walked out the front door. Connor wears an overcoat – his own overcoat, something Hank had given him the week before. He doesn’t need it, of course, since he would only begin to malfunction in extreme conditions, but he enjoys Hank’s expression when he pulls it off the coat rack.

“Fits nice,” Hank observes, the same way he had when Connor tried it on the first time. “Warm enough?”

Sumo strains against the leash, yanking at Hank’s hand in staccato jerks. Connor opens the front door and stands back to let them both pass. “It’s perfect,” he says, and he locks up the house behind them.

The only concession Hank makes to the turmoil outside their suburb is his gun, settled securely in the holster on his hip. He’s never had occasion to use it. Markus is committed to bringing about change through political dialogue and peaceful action, and impresses upon his – their? – people that violence is never the answer. It doesn’t stop humans or androids from causing trouble. Thankfully, though, that trouble never seems to follow Hank home. He doesn’t even seem aware of the possibility that something unexpected could happen, focused entirely on Sumo as he lumbers back and forth on the sidewalk. Connor doesn’t believe anything will happen, either, but he pays attention. Just in case.

After half an hour’s stroll, leisurely and quiet save for the crunch of heavy shoes and paws in the snow, they find an empty park. Sparsely populated by skeleton trees, its primary feature is a metal seesaw dripping with icicles and frozen, off-balance, in place. There are no benches, or even any other playground equipment. Connor looks at Hank dubiously, wondering whether he led them here purposefully or if finding this place was an accident. Was it a place from his past? Had he played here with Cole, once, or did they usually visit the playground near the bridge?

“Come here, goofball,” Hank says, tugging to get Sumo’s attention. Sumo dutifully steps closer, panting and drooling heavily as Hank fiddles with the snap hook. His fingers are stiff with the cold. It takes him a few tries to unclasp it. “All right. You’re free.”

With a deep, resonating bark, Sumo takes off into the park. He moves so quickly Connor nearly goes after him, an instinct triggered both by what Hank calls his “chase scene” protocol and a sudden fear that Sumo might not stop running. It isn’t necessary after all. Sumo makes a beeline for a pile of snow beneath one of the dormant trees and sticks his head right in it. A laugh punches its way out of Connor’s chest. He doesn’t laugh very often, but he likes to, when it strikes him.

Hank rolls his eyes, but he’s chuckling, too. “Dumb dog,” he says, as Sumo half-buries his upper body in the snow and contorts himself in impossible positions. The hand holding Sumo’s leash goes into one pocket, bright green nylon making a lumpy bulge and trailing back down to the ground. His other hand hangs free. “He loves the snow. Always has. Built for it, I guess.”

Connor nods, somewhat distracted. His hands are free, too. They’re their usual pale color, artificial vein bulges and finger bones giving him the illusion of reality without the proper execution. If he felt the cold, his skin might be reddening, chapped and dry. “Saint Bernards are bred for cold climates,” he says, dumping useless trivia he’s sure Hank already knows. Grimacing, he tries to cover it up. “I’m glad he’s happy.”

Hank doesn’t seem to have noticed his slip-up. He’s watching Sumo play, shifting his weight from foot to foot, and smiling. “He is. This was a nice idea, Connor. Thanks.”

It’s so easy, then.

Buoyed by tingling warmth traveling from the middle of his back down into each extremity, buzzing and sparking like a frayed wire, he reaches out and touches the back of Hank’s hand with a knuckle. It isn’t enough to feel much of anything. He can only register the temperature of his skin, and that he’s touched him in a hollow dip between his metacarpals. Without his input or his intent, a small circle of white plastic blooms at their contact. Connor can’t tear his eyes from it.

“I’m glad you’re happy, too.”

Hank doesn’t look down. Neither does he look at Connor. Clearing his throat, he takes a sideways step away and stuffs that hand into his other pocket.

“Sumo!” he calls. His voice breaks, briefly, crumbling apart on the second syllable. Sumo pauses mid-roll. He’s upside down and blatantly perturbed at being interrupted. The quizzical expression on his face matches the way Connor feels, fingers outstretched as if he expects Hank will come back. Hank whistles and pats his leg. “Come on, let’s go.”

Sumo groans, long-sufferingly, and gets to his feet.

“You want to go back?”

“Yeah, well.” Hank brushes powdered snow off Sumo’s nose, and then wipes at his slobbering jowls with a rag he’d stuffed in his back pocket. Sumo endures these ministrations patiently, his tail leaving tracks as he gently wags it back and forth. “It’s getting late. Gotta get dinner on the stove, and shit.”

He could point out Hank’s lie. It’s a terrible one; Connor knows that it’s not even half-past three in the afternoon and that he won’t be hungry for several hours yet. They could fight right here, in the park, hash out everything about what just happened now, before they have the time to fester. He could try again, closing the gap Hank put between them and demanding that he return his touch.

If this is pain, he sees why CyberLife never gave him the ability to feel it. It’s distracting, all-encompassing. He wants to rip out the pieces of him that hurt to make it stop.

“Hank–” he strains.

Hank holds up the hand Connor had touched to stop him from speaking. He looks tired. Sad. “Don’t. Just – don’t. Let’s go home.”

They don’t talk about it afterward. Sumo, still worked up from his truncated playtime, has to go into the side yard and chase a ball around for a while before he calms down. Hank shrugs off Connor’s offer to take care of it, and they stay outside for a long time. Left with nothing else, Connor goes back to his show, though the interspersed moments of levity leave a strange, disagreeable residue in his mouth. He isn’t enjoying himself. He’s sinking into a kind of torpor, information washing over him like a wave crashing on the shore, and yet he finds he can’t tear himself away. All he wants to do is sit, and feel miserable.

Hank comes back after sunset, swearing at the cold again as if it’s the weather’s fault he loitered in frigid temperatures the whole day. Sumo bypasses Connor entirely. Dripping all over the laminate wood flooring, he tumbles into his favorite spot by the radiator and sighs, full-bodied, before he closes his eyes.

“I’m going to bed,” Hank mumbles, taking off his coat. He leaves it on the rack, hesitates, and then makes to slink off to his room, head hunched between his shoulders.

Something ugly inside Connor reaches up and turns his head to follow Hank’s progress. It speaks with his voice, dripping with cold disdain he didn’t know he felt. He finds it doesn’t bother him to sound angry. Maybe he’s been angry all afternoon. “I thought you were going to make dinner.”

“Not hungry,” Hank says.

He doesn’t want to talk. Connor shouldn’t make him talk. He’s never pushed so far that Hank couldn’t back out if he was uncomfortable, or forced a conversation about things neither of them are ready to discuss. He’s always let Hank–

Wrinkling his nose, pursing his lips – he _is_ angry, he’s furious, even, and doesn’t it feel satisfying to admit that – he gets up from the couch and turns to face the hallway.

“I don’t think this is fair.”

Hank stops before he sets foot in the hallway, bracing himself against the wall to one side of his bookshelf.

“So we’re doing this, huh?” he asks, addressing the empty air. When Connor doesn’t respond, he makes a fist and taps the wall with it before he turns away, as if steeling himself. As if a conversation with Connor is going to be unpleasant. He doesn’t try not to feel insulted. In what’s supposed to be his placating voice, ruined by a fraying temper, Hank adds, “Lots of things in life aren’t fair. You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“I don’t think it’s fair,” Connor says, biting the word out through clenched teeth, _fair_ , “that you’ve set the parameters of our relationship without consulting me.”

“What relationship, Connor? What exactly do you think this is?”

“Unequal, at best. That’s my point. You’ve made all the rules, and I can’t follow them if you refuse to tell me what it is you want.”

The crease in Hank’s nasolabial fold deepens as he scowls. “What I want?” he repeats, as if he’s never heard the phrase before. Then he shakes his head, dismissing it. “What rules? What the fuck are you talking about?”

Connor wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, rattle sense into him so he can stop pretending he can’t understand. Or – he doesn’t. Even now, despite all his frustration, the way the place where his ribs would be physically aches, how much it hurts to be rejected… what he wants is Hank.

With that thought, the ugly feeling dies. All his anger goes with it, leaving behind the swelling, tight, painful longing he’s been feeling for what he’s sure is an eternity. He modifies his tone to be softer, gentler, and if it sounds like he’s pleading, he thinks it’s because he is. “You touch me, Hank,” Connor says. “All the time.” He moves around the edge of the couch, past the end table, and stands in the middle of the room. No more barriers. “We sit on this couch together, and you put your hand in my hair, and I – I don’t know what to do. What I’m allowed to do.”

“Jesus,” is Hank’s response. It’s low, and probably unintentional. He looks as if he’s been struck by lightning. “Fucking Christ.”

“I don’t have the language for this, or the biological imperative. I’m missing pieces of the puzzle, but I…” Connor spreads his hands in a helpless gesture. “I want to be around you. I want your attention. I like your attention.”

The words aren’t strong enough, not to encompass everything he means to say. Hank seems to understand, regardless. A simulated visual shows Connor exactly how fast his heart is pounding, the muscle pulsating arrhythmically in his breast, but he blinks until the information disappears. He doesn’t care about that.

Hank licks his lips. He parts them, closes them, gaze darting everywhere except Connor as if something in the room will save him from having to speak. Nothing ever comes.

“I didn’t know… fuck me. That’s not true.” Hank tugs at the hair hanging in his face, pulling it to the back of his scalp and holding it there. It falls from his grip, a few strands at a time, and then – their eyes meet. His dark circles are permanent, made darker by the shadow of his heavy browbone. In the low light, Connor can’t see their color. It all blends into black. “I knew. What I was doing, at least. No sense in denying that now. Look, Connor, I… I’m all you’ve got. That’s not how it should be, but it is. I can’t take advantage of that. Not…” His nose twitches, and his mouth presses into a thin line. “Not more than I already have.”

“You aren’t keeping me prisoner, you know.” A new option presents itself, a risk for him to consider, so Connor takes it. Three small steps, evenly spaced, slow and careful like approaching a wild animal. Like a hostage negotiation. He allows the humor of it to touch him, just long enough to make him smile, and then lets it go. This is nothing like any of that. “I could leave any time, if I wanted to, and I know you would not stop me. I could find androids to live with.” Most androids fear him and his close involvement with the police. “Markus would likely appreciate an extra hand in politicking.” It might be more akin to what he’s made for, but the idea of arguing in Washington all day is borderline abhorrent. “Another human might even take me in.”

Hank frowns at that. Proprietary, jealous behavior. He quickly schools himself into a renewed look of feigned neutrality, but Connor knows him better than to be fooled.

“What keeps me here,” he says, coming a little bit closer, pushing his luck, “isn’t obligation, or a lack of curiosity. It’s you. I want you. Just… tell me what I can do.”

They’re as close to each other as they had been in the park, but they stood shoulder to shoulder, then – facing outward, staring into the snow together. Nothing holds his attention now except Hank. The collar of a blue and white porcelain button-up lays against his neck, rumpled from being pressed down by his coat. Several undone buttons expose a white undershirt and, above that, a few stray curls of gray chest hair. His nose is red, his cheeks blotchy, and he’s breathing in quick, shallow bursts.

“There aren’t any rules,” he says. “Not ones I made up on purpose.” Pinching the bridge of his nose, he squints his eyes shut and takes a deep inhale. On a long, sighing exhale, he groans, “Fuck, I never wanted to have this conversation.”

If Connor takes another full step, he’ll run out of room. He wants to, though. He wants to.

“What was the alternative?” he asks.

Hank opens one eye, slumped so that he and Connor are of a height. The hand on his nose falls between them. “Figured I could take what you gave me until I died. Or maybe you’d come to your senses and decide to go somewhere else, someday. Either way, the only person who could get hurt would be me.”

Connor reaches for him, with both hands. He keeps better control of his skin, this time, holding it in place through sheer force of will until he has Hank’s palm cupped gently in his fingers. Then he lets the tips of his thumbs bleed away. It changes – everything, electrical impulses vibrating through him and into Hank like his own version of a pulse. If Hank feels it, he doesn’t say. He watches, though, flexing, rolling his bones beneath Connor’s touch.

“I don’t want you to be hurt.”

“Better’n if it’s you,” Hank snorts. “I’ve got loads of experience. When you… earlier.” He stumbles over several false starts, blows out an angry breath, and swears again. In one quick movement, he’s got his fingers wrapped around Connor’s in a firm grip, squeezing tight. Pale, unblemished skin rolls back to reveal clean white plastic up to his wrist. “I don’t,” Hank says, choking back something caught in his throat, “I don’t know how to be happy anymore.”

Hank’s unexpected gesture freed one of Connor’s hands, and he thinks… well. All the risks he’s taken up to this point have panned out fine. “How are you, now?” he asks, reaching up to touch Hank’s cheek.

He almost jerks away. Connor feels the muscles in his neck tense, the sudden set of his jaw as he clenches his teeth. Before he follows through, though, he settles. The bristles of his beard scratch Connor’s palm when he smiles. “Not awful. Suppose that’s a start.”

Grazing his thumb over the rise of Hank’s cheek, Connor smiles back. If he wipes away a trace of moisture, escaped from brimming eyes and easily blamed on a winter’s stuffy nose, he pays it no mind.

The timing of their conversation might have been better. On its heels, the height of the holiday season hits Detroit like a sledgehammer. It’s Connor’s first Christmas, his first Hanukkah, his first Yule, and everything about each celebration is new and exciting – or, it would be. Hank used to celebrate Christmas, before Cole died, and as the day approaches, his moods go sour and he begins to withdraw. On the shortest day of the year, Hank starts drinking before the sun goes down and doesn’t stop until Connor takes the glass from his hands several hours later. When he helps him into bed he self-deprecates, and asks why Connor doesn’t go out into the world and enjoy the season without him.

The truth is, he says, he doesn’t mind waiting. There will be other holidays.

Detroit’s city government goes back and forth on whether to cancel New Year’s Eve celebrations several times. With androids still camping out in the inner city, spilling out into neighborhoods as more and more come to see the birthplace of the revolution, the question of safety – for everyone, the mayor is careful to stress – is imperative. Finally, they settle on a handful of contained events, in designated locations, and a well-publicized fireworks show fired from a high-rise. Fowler puts Hank in charge of a team of officers and assigns him a spot where heavy android presence is expected.

“Banking on my association with you,” he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He’s not wearing a uniform, which is hardly a surprise, but Connor wishes he’d protect himself with something better than just the gun at his hip. “A pretty healthy number of androids saw me with you when you saved my ass from your dickwad evil twin. Maybe Jeffrey thinks it’s passed down the grapevine.”

“It might have,” Connor says. He follows Hank outside to say goodbye, pulling the front door shut so Sumo doesn’t escape. “You know he wasn’t my evil twin.”

Hank rolls his eyes. “You’ve told me. Listen, normally I’d tell you to find a party downtown, but, uh… stay home tonight, would you? Just in case.”

“Are you worried?”

“No,” Hank says. It’s a lie, but it’s well-intentioned. “I really doubt anything’s gonna happen, but if it does, I’d like to know you’re safe.”

Connor frowns. “If I told you to be safe, would you listen?”

“To you? Yeah. At least this once.”

He has no response to – he’s speechless. Hank grins, a toothy, shit-eating smile that quickly fades into something tender.

“I won’t be back ‘til pretty late,” he says. “Way after midnight.” They’ve gone over his schedule, several times, but it soothes something inside Connor to hear it again. He wouldn’t want to exacerbate Hank’s nerves by saying so, but he’s worried, too.

“Is that significant?” he asks.

“Just means I gotta do this early.”

Hank takes Connor’s face in his hands. His palms slip from cheek to jaw, fingers brushing at the faux-clipped edge of his hairline and over the painted-on moles Connor recognizes by touch. He’s stepped into his space, nearer than they’ve ever been, breathing in the recycled air he exhales like Hank’s suffocating. Or perhaps that’s Connor, his simulated respiratory system picking up speed as his eyes widen, gasping for a breath he doesn’t need and whispering Hank’s name. That’s all he has time for. A mouth descends on his, chapped lips catching him at the tail end of his sigh.

He’s never done this before. He isn’t sure whether he should close his mouth, or open it further – tongues are supposed to be involved, from what he understands, and his hands should be doing something – but Hank pulls away before he can make up his mind. It’s only for a moment. A hot puff of air skirts across his mouth, and something touches his nose. Probably Hank’s nose, he thinks, but he doesn’t want to open his eyes to check.

“There,” Hank rumbles, the sound of it rattling Connor’s body like an earthquake. “Clock’s struck twelve. Happy New Year.”

Connor’s hand belatedly flies up to grab Hank’s wrist, holding him in place. “Oh,” he says, very eloquently. _Oh_. He might have kicked himself if it hadn’t made Hank laugh, another breath caressing his face, and lean back into kiss him again.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) To the commenter who said they hoped our boys held hands in the end, I'm very sorry that's what I picked to be the breaking point, and hope their second, more successful attempt at hand holding was a satisfactory apology.  
> 2) I have never identified so strongly with a character so different with myself as I do with Hank. Something in his soul (?) reaches out and touches mine, in a way I find both ineffable and deeply confusing. Naturally the best way I have to express it is by doing things like giving him my gastrointestinal problems and my allergy to complicated feelings. Also, he shouldn't be a fifty-three year old alcoholic with a terrible diet and not have bathroom troubles. That's just not realistic.  
> 3) Finally, finally, finally.
> 
> As ever, a genuine thank you from the bottom of my heart to the friends who still let me yell about this terrible game, especially to two in particular who encouraged me through writing this. Thank you to y'all, as well, for indulging me and being so genuinely lovely; I have never enjoyed posting fic more than I have for the people in this fandom. Come find me on twitter @beepgrandchero, where all I do is complain about writing and retweet HankCon art.


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